Ten things I know…

In which our heroes finally find their way out of Thomasville, GA,
travel to Tallahassee, FL via backroads, locate 10 West, and resume their journey
to New Orleans, LA, while fighting the overwhelming fatigue brought on by
their ill-advised detour through southern Georgia.

Having passed through the eight stages of Detour Denial (amusement, annoyance, anger, more anger, disgust, seething anger, depression, blinding rage), our hearts even heavier than our eyelids, on our three-hundredth trip down a street marked “84,” we finally spotted a tiny sign that said “Tallahassee” with an arrow pointing down what looked like a residential side street. Fearing that the sign might be a mirage brought on by a combination of dehydration and pathetic desperation, we made a quick circle to read it, again. Upon a second reading, the sign still said Tallahassee, but the street it pointed to looked iffy, to say the least. We decided that anything was better than another minute in Thomasville, GA, and so struck out down the Tallahassee path.

Here is our initial screwup:

A little over fifty miles and forty-five minutes. Had we turned around and gone back exactly the way we came, the total delay would have been about one hour and thirty minutes. Not great, but survivable.

The clerk at the gas station said to take the 14 back to 10 West, but the 14 was barely a paved road as far as we could tell, and MapQuest seemed to have a better route, so we went west a piece:

Another forty miles and about fifty minutes. This is getting ugly, but we’re still OK, still OK. Oh, wait, this is Thomasville, GA, nothing here is OK.

Finally, we followed a path of “approximately thataway” and found our way to the Tallahassee area and 10 West.

Initial mistake: missed an exit that was only six miles away.
Compounding factor: Failed to notice we had entered an entirely wrong state.
Compounding factor: Decided to try and find a more efficient route back to the proper highway.
Compounding factor: The streets in and around Thomasville, GA, were designed by meth-addicted chimpanzees wielding random number generators.
Minimum time we could have lost due to the initial error: One or two minutes turning around for the proper exit.
Actual time lost to this detour: Somewhere north of four hours.

Finally, though, here we are, on a sparsely populated back road heading toward Tallahasse, FL, and 10 West. Thar she blows, the freeway of our dreams! Now we’re on our way! Party ahoy! New Orleans around the bend! Are you excited? I’m exc… exc… *YAWN*. I’m a little sleepy, actually. That was quite a detour. Hey, what the hell is this? My friend is asleep and now I’m driving all alone. Highway hypnosis is working its magic, but I must… get… to… New Orleans. We need to arrive in time to check into our hotel and to arrange the “BIG SURPRISE.”

I soldier on, singing softly to myself and trying not to be lulled to sleep by the white lines flashing by on the pavement. The occasional snatch of conversation as my friend drifts in and out of sleep helps, but soon I am forced to pull off at a rest stop. This pisses me off royally. I am, as I may have mentioned, a man, and I am one of those men who likes to cover ground quickly when I’m traveling. I am furious at having to take a break, but our little side trip to hell/Thomasville has really sapped my energy.

We sleep fitfully for a bit, then we are on our way, once more. The rest of the trip passes fairly uneventfully, and we check into our hotel in the early afternoon. We’re both dead tired, but I have to prepare for the “BIG SURPRISE.”

Next: The “BIG SURPRISE,” and way, way, way, way too much alcohol in way, way, way, way too short a period of time.

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In today’s installment of “Dr. Wrongturn, or: How I Learned to Weep onto my Steering Wheel and Hate Thomasville, Georgia,” we will calmly, patiently, and maturely address the question of whether the civil engineers and city planners who designed Thomasville should be dragged from their cars at stoplights and beaten mercilessly by the hordes of motorists who have become entangled in the city’s sticky, gossamer web of identically numbered state routes. Should those poor, unfortunate souls who, even now, drive in hopeless circles around Thomasville, eyes wide as saucers, knuckles white on steering wheels, their ears filled with the piteous cries of their hungry children, be allowed to impose vigilante justice on the people who created this roach motel crafted to look like an innocent piece of southern Americana?

The answer is, “Yes.” Furthermore, I support disinterment and desecration of any responsible parties who may have already gone on to their great reward, serving at the feet of the Prince of Darkness.

Here is Thomasville, GA, courtesy of Google Maps

.

It looks so unremarkable from here, but let’s expand our view a little (click for full size):

I want you to take a minute, look at the full-sized version of the above picture, and count how many Route 84s you see. How many individual, apparently unconnected, streets all share that single route designation. While you’re at it, have a quick hunt around for 319s, as well. I had initially edited the map above in Photoshop to highlight my point, but I’ve decided it’s more fun to allow my readers to look for themselves. Take your time, I’ll wait.

….

You’re done, are you? Did you like the way Route 84 would occasionally just end right in the middle of a road and become something else? How about the giant doglegs where Route 84 peters out at an intersection then just reappears a mile or two away? Best of all, did you notice how many times some of those state routes intersect themselves? Do you think I am joking? Please, have another look. You can actually be on Route 319 and come to a four-way intersection where all three other directions are also Route 319. I wonder how many of you spotted the bonus route, #122. Have a look at how 122 comes in the northeast corner of Thomasville, gets swallowed by the route tangle at the center of town, then, mysteriously, juts off of 319 southwest of the city, heading in a completely unrelated direction.

My words and the illustrations above do not do justice to the awful evil that is the Thomasville, GA street system. While trying to find our way out of this sixth circle of hell, we saw signs that literally showed this:

I wish I were kidding.

I had so many hilarious things I wanted to say about Thomasville and the time we spent lost there, but none of it seems funny, anymore. Don’t go to Thomasville.

Tomorrow (or possibly later, I am fantastically lazy): We find our way to 10 West, then on to New Orleans, then on to… THE FAMOUS DOOR.

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The route from Miami to New Orleans is really quite simple: You take 75 North, pay enough in tolls to fund a semester in college, hook up with the 10 West near Tallahassee, and ride that baby the rest of the way in. Easy as pie, right? Well, throw in a couple of good friends who haven’t seen each other in a while and an ill-timed cell phone call from a girlfriend, and you have a recipe for a detour.

Interior: Front passenger compartment of a 2008 Chevy Impala SS; the driver is speaking to his lone passenger.
Driver: “Oooh, get Willin’, by Little Feat. Willin’ isn’t just a great driving song, it’s actually about driving.”
Passenger: “I see ‘Willing’ by Little Feat.”
Driver: “Yeah, that’s…”

[Chuck Berry’s Maybelline starts playing somewhere in the car. The driver digs in his pocket and retrieves his cell phone, which is the source of the noise.]

Driver: “Hello? Yeah, hi, Babe. Were on the 75 North near Tallahassee.”
Caller: “Blah blah blah, blah.”
Driver: “Yak? Yak, yak yak yak, yak.”
Caller: “Yak, blah. Blah blah. Yak, yak?”
Passenger: “Woohoo, I see the sign: 10 West, six miles.”
Driver: “Yak, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.”
Caller: “Blah… blah blah blah, blah blah blah? Yak.”

[Phone call ends, conversation in car resumes, Willin’ plays, followed by Signed, Sealed, Delivered, and other great driving tunes.]

Driver: “Does that sign say Valdosta, GA?”

Sadly, the answer was, “Yes.” We had whipped right past our exit and trucked on into Valdosta. All I saw of the town was a gas station, where we got directions back to 10 West which, of course, we ignored, but it seemed like a lovely place.

The same cannot be said of Thomasville.

Thomasville has a quaint charm, with lots of trees and sleepy downtown areas. It appears at first blush to be a place where a man could cultivate a happy life with the woman he loves and the children she gives him. Don’t be fooled: Thomasville is evil, evil in a creeping, insidious way that lulls you into a false sense of security then hits you like an out of control Mac truck. The effect is very much like what happens when your lover pulls the blanket up over your head in bed, then farts in the air pocket, laughing as you tear at the blanket and gasp for air. At first, it seemed sweet, and felt cozy, then it became a hellish nightmare of claustrophobia and attempted escape. That’s Thomasville for you, the suburban version of being hotboxed.

What makes Thomasville so hideous? What evil lurks within its confines? What could possibly motivate me to say such terrible things about this (deceptively) lovely little southern town? The answers to these questions, and many more you haven’t asked, will be explored in my next installment of the New Orleans Odyssey: “Thomasville: Threat or Menace.”

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We just got back from New Orleans. I had fun and vast quantities of booze, as well as some rabbit tenderloin. A more complete update, complete with “BIG SURPRISE”, is coming once I have settled in.

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I haven’t posted a “Ten Things I Know” article in quite a while. I feel bad about that, because I really do want this blog to be helpful as well as (I hope) entertaining. This blog is called “Ten Things I Know,” and I feel like I haven’t been faithful enough to this site’s original premise. The thing is, the TTIK articles are much, much harder to write than the more casual posts that you generally find in the “Front Page Musings” category. That’s no excuse, though, and I know it. I am hereby reaffirming my intention to provide semi-useful content alongside the posts where I accuse major celebrities of vampirism.

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I like blogs. Do you like blogs? I like blogs.

I also like to laugh. The only thing (that I will publicly admit to) that I like nearly as much as laughing is making other people laugh. If you ask me, I’m pretty darn funny. You didn’t ask me, but there it is, all the same.

I got some “link love” from another blog recently, so I stopped by to have a look. As it happens, I think it’s a pretty good blog. Some of the material is NC-17, but I’m over seventeen, so it didn’t kill me. Sometimes snarky, sometimes funny, and consistently well-written, ettarose-edgeofsanity gives you the lowdown on what its webmistress thinks of everything from paying taxes to her own clumsiness to contributing to birthday gifts for people she doesn’t like. A blog from the point of view of a 50-year-old woman who is capable of both raising her three grandchildren and swearing like a sailor is refreshing, indeed.

See Mike Draw his web comic. I’m not a huge fan of web comics because, frankly, most of them suck. That’s just my opinion, of course, but who else’s opinion did you expect to find in this post? As far as web comics go, though, Mike’s has a pretty good hit:miss ratio. I also like the free form nature of the comics: if Mike needs one panel, he draws one; if Mike needs four panels, he draws four; if Mike’s feeling colorful, you get color, otherwise it’s black-and-white for the day. I’m rather partial to this one.

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I can’t prove it, but it’s the only logical conclusion given the evidence. Sammy Hagar was born in 1947 and is sixty years old as of this writing. As these photos clearly illustrate, Rock-and-Roll legend Sammy Hagar is walking around in the body of a man at least twenty years his junior. Look at that hair! What is responsible for Mr. Hagar’s freakishly youthful appearance? I believe I know.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in the guise of Sherlock Holmes, said, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” I won’t bore you with the details of my thought processes, but I was able, after some hours of thought, to reduce the Sammy Hagar mystery to two possibilities.

• Hypothesis #1: Living the rock star life is good for your health.
• Hypothesis #2: Sammy Hagar engages in youth-prolonging rituals, namely the drinking of virgin blood.

Now, it doesn’t take a genius to see that #1 is clearly impossible. All one needs to do to prove that to one’s self is to reflect on the number of rock stars that have choked on their own vomit before the age of thirty. Clearly, the rock star life is not good for your health. That leaves only one possibility: Sammy Hagar drinks virgin blood. He may supplement his virgin blood intake with healthy eating habits and yoga, but I think we all know where the real power is coming from (Satan).

What about Mick Jagger, you ask? Yes, Mick appears astonishingly fit for his age, but as these photos show, Mick Jagger, who is only four years older than Sammy Hagar, has actually aged during the course of his nearly fifty years in show business. The difference is subtle but important: Mick Jagger looks very fit for his age, whereas Sammy Hagar looks like he is some other age, completely!

If Sammy Hagar happens to read this, I would like to invite him to send me his secret age-defying virgin-blood recipes, I promise to keep them to myself. I would love to look that good at sixty. In fact, I’d like to look that good, now.

If Mick Jagger reads this, you rock, dude. You wear your wrinkles well, but you might consider asking Sammy for just one or two bottles of his evil brew, so you don’t die before you make it back to the American south for another show.

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(Author’s note: I decided on Mothers’ instead of Mother’s to express plural ownership. If you prefer Mother’s, just pretend you’re dyslexic and swap the apostrophe around.)

Is it just me, or does it seem like Mothers’ Day comes around maybe five, six times per year? It’s the damndest thing, Christmas seems to come just about once per year, along with Thanksgiving and Easter, but it feels like we have Mothers’ Day every other month or so. Every year, the first time I hear that this holiday is approaching, I always find myself saying, “What, already?”

Maybe it’s because Christmas and Easter and Halloween and Thanksgiving all have a lot of fanfare surrounding them that starts a good two or three months out from the actual holiday. Maybe the decorations and commercials seep into my subconscious and alert me that those holidays are coming, while Mothers’ Day is more of a stealth holiday. Much like Daylight Savings Time, Mothers’ Day zooms in under your radar, coming at you hard and fast, and explodes into your consciousness at 11:45pm the night before, causing you to have to run to the store (or run around your house, resetting clocks) in a panic looking for an appropriate card. Of course, the only cards left are the ones that say, “You look like a million dollars: green and wrinkled.” You’re pretty sure Mom has a sense of humor, but this might not be the day to test it.

OK, so moms have a tough job. Some of them do it pretty well, some of them screw it up royally, most of them manage to muddle through. I understand why Mothers’ Day exists. I’m a little less clear on why Fathers’ Day seems to get mostly glossed over. I find that hypocritical and cynical, but you will not catch me saying so in print. What really burns my biscuits, though [WARNING: Monster digression brewing, please hold on to the handrail], is these completely bogus holidays that seem to be growing up between our toes like poisonous weeds, wrapping themselves around our ankles and tripping us up as we try to navigate from January first to December thirty-first. My favorite (in the sense of “most hated”) example of this is Sweetest Day. Sweetest Day is Valentines Day Round Two, nothing more, nothing less. Some revisionist Sweetest Day apologists claim the holiday was invented to bring cheer to orphans or some such baloney, but we men know the truth: Sweetest Day is the product of an evil conspiracy between Big Candy, the Worldwide Greeting Card Consortium, the international florists cartels, and, possibly, the Bilderberg Group, designed to crush mens’ spirits and stuff the ever-hungry maw of the retail gift industry. I have no solid proof of Bilderberg involvement, but with something as insidious as Sweetest Day, I’m sure they’re involved, somehow.

Sweetest Day nestles quietly on the downhill slope of October, coiled and waiting to strike. Like a nest of vipers hidden beneath a fallen log, Sweetest Day shelters in the shadow of Halloween, waiting for the unwary North American male to approach close enough to become a victim. Who can blame the poor fellow, with the hoopla surrounding Halloween, how is this innocent creature supposed to remember to buy candy both for the little children and for his significant other? Why should a man be saddled with this unreasonable burden, especially when Valentine’s Day is just around the corner? Why is our hero not free to simply ignore or forget Sweetest Day? I will tell you why [WARNING: I am about to make broad, sexist generalizations about men and women. I have no medical or educational history to back up these chauvinist ideas, but I’m right and you know it.]: because his girlfriend will remember. I have no idea how this works with homosexual couples, but with the standard male-female configuration, the man is expected, at various times during the year, to spew gifts like a faulty arcade crane machine. Any man who forgets to do so at the appropriate times (as designated by the woman and/or the candy companies) is subject to severe penalties. (I would like to point out that, with great restraint, I did not make an “early withdrawal” joke in the previous sentence.) Your girlfriend, who can never remember where she left her car keys, remembers with photographic clarity every single square on the calendar that has a gift-giving holiday of any kind associated with it. Your Catholic girlfriend, who has never seen a Jew except on South Park, knows EXACTLY when Hanukkah starts and ends, and if you are 1/64 Jewish on your great-great-grandmother’s side, you’d better make with the gifts. Women, we love you and we treasure you, but you are not entitled to gifts simply for existing. Somehow, the media, the candy companies, the greeting card companies, the Bilderbergers, evolution, your parents, my parents, and the guy who makes those car commercials where he screams at you about down payments (he may not actually be involved, but I hate him, so he’s on the damn list) have convinced you otherwise. Our affection for you is not measured in squares of chocolate, nor in jewelery, nor in sappy greeting cards. Having said that, your man is probably a clueless dolt who will never think to buy you flowers unless someone hits him over the head with the bouquet, so I’m going to let Valentine’s Day slide. That’s it, though, you don’t get two!

If you’re not offended yet, hold on, I’ve got more.

I also despise Secretaries Day. Oh, excuse me, Administrative Professionals Day, as if the concept weren’t insipid enough. If your boss appreciates you and gives you something extra, great! Otherwise, tough. Unless you are doing something extraordinarily altruistic or socially redeeming, like accepting a starvation wage to teach mentally handicapped children or working for peanuts rebuilding hurricane-damaged homes for strangers, you don’t deserve to be fawned over for doing the job you’re paid to do. If your boss is a jerk and doesn’t acknowledge your contributions, spit in his coffee and move on. That’s the system we’ve had for thousands of years, and, by gum, I think it’s the one we should stick with. There are too many jobs and not enough days in the year. We do not need Administrative Professionals Day, we do not need Street Sweeper Appreciation Day, We do not need The Guy Who Sells You Your Beer at the Stadium Day, we do not need Blogger Appreciation Day, we do not need to stroke and coddle everyone for every little thing they do. If you want roses and candy, get out there and buy some.

I’m not even going to point out how the VAST majority of bogus holidays end with women getting the gifts and men getting the burden of responsibility. Yeah, you could be a male secretary working for a female boss, but unless I missed something, it’s still weighted in the other direction. Not to mention that we men barely remember our own birthdays, much less bogus greeting card holidays and we wouldn’t sulk and lose your phone messages for a week if you forgot to buy us a latte on Administrative Professionals Day.

My vitriolic hatred is running out, so I am going to wind it up, here. As my final act in this post, I am calling for a violent uprising against the flower and candy cartels that have oppressed the American (and probably other western) males for far too long. I want to see rioting, fires, and widespread looting. Once we’ve overthrown the greedy corporate holiday creators, I will appoint myself Holiday Ambassador and will personally see to it that no more of this bullshit slips into our culture. Since I am not expecting a lot of support from women (except maybe the ones in lesbian relationships that have to buy the gifts, again, not sure how that works), I am counting on you men to carry my message to the streets. Vive La Revolucion!

[Oh, wait, this was about Mothers’ Day. I’d better un-digress.]

So, pick up that phone and call your mom. Unless she was a rotten, heartless shrew, she deserves a little appreciation for her work. If your mother was a heartless shrew, you can always hang up on her when she answers. Either way, you’ll be glad you called.

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